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Copyright © 2017 by Cheryl Honigford
Cover and internal design © 2017 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Adrienne Krogh/Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover images © E.Druzhinina/Shutterstock, Miss Fortuna/Shutterstock, USBFCO/Shutterstock, rudall30/Shutterstock, Soloma/Shutterstock, Malchev/Shutterstock
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567–4410
(630) 961–3900
Fax: (630) 961–2168
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Honigford, Cheryl, author.
Title: Homicide for the holidays / Cheryl Honigford.
Description: Naperville : Sourcebooks Landmark, [2017] | Series: [A Viv and Charlie mystery]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017014664 | (trade pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Radio actors and actresses--Fiction. | Radio serials--Fiction. | Murder--Investigation--Fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction. | Historical fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3608.O4945 H66 2017 | DDC 813/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014664
Also by Cheryl Honigford
The Darkness Knows
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Reading Group Guide
A Conversation with the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
For
Mom—who took me to the library on Wednesday nights (and any other time I asked)
and
Dad—who lugged the old Underwood typewriter out to the dining room table so I could hunt and peck out my first stories
Chapter One
December 23, 1938
Joy to the world and all that rot, Vivian thought. She tossed a handful of tinsel on the towering spruce in the corner of the den and sighed. The last thing she wanted to do was put on a happy face for her mother’s Christmas party, but that was precisely what she was expected to do this evening.
“You missed a spot.”
“Hmm?”
“Right there.” Vivian’s younger brother, Everett, nodded his auburn head toward a gaping swath of green near right front center. It was the only spot on the eight-foot tree that Vivian hadn’t managed to cover in gaudy silver tinsel. She dipped her hand in the box, grabbed a handful of the shiny strands, and tossed them haphazardly at the void.
Everett glanced sidelong at her, one eyebrow raised.
“Say, Mrs. Claus. Who curdled your cream?”
Vivian sighed and dropped the box of tinsel to the floor.
“I don’t know about you, but this party is the last thing I want to be doing tonight. Especially when Mother’s invited her new…her new…” She flapped her hand as she searched her mind for an appropriate word for her mother’s new companion, Oskar Heigel. Stray bits of tinsel floated lazily from her fingers to the Oriental rug.
Everett watched her with a frown. “Boyfriend?” he supplied.
Vivian wrinkled her nose.
“I know,” he said. “It’s absurd.”
Vivian knew he meant both the idea and the term. Everett, five years younger than Vivian, was a sophomore at Northwestern. She didn’t see him often, but Vivian was glad he was home now. He was the only one that could possibly understand how uncomfortable this situation made her. Their mother expressing romantic interest in a man other than their father was awkward, and it seemed sudden, somehow, even nearly eight years after their father’s death.
Everett shrugged, then leaned down to fit the plug into the socket. The blue, green, and red lights strung around the tree blinked to life. Everett swept his arm out in a ta-da motion. Then he stood back and eyed their handiwork with a critical air. “Well, what do you think?”
Vivian blew air out over her protruding bottom lip, ruffling her bangs.
“I think it’s a garish spectacle,” she said.
“Well, you know Mother’s motto. The Bigger the Better.”
Vivian laughed in spite of her mood. That was true. When it came to Christmas trees, their mother favored the grand. But this year’s specimen was frankly ridiculous. It had been delivered that morning by two burly men who’d dragged it through the house, trailing needles everywhere. They’d had to saw off the bottom two feet to make it fit, and it still brushed the plaster ceiling.
She leaned forward and inhaled deeply. It did smell heavenly though: pine and sap and the earthy dampness of thawing mud. That smell brought every Christmas of her childhood to the surface of her memory in an instant.
“It was Father’s fault,” Everett said. “Indulging her like that with her very first tree. Set a bad precedent.”
Vivian followed her brother’s eyes to their mother, who was fussing at the refreshment table on the other side of the room. If Vivian wanted any indication of how she would look in twenty-odd years, she need look no further than Julia Witchell. Vivian had inherited her mother’s petite stature, her strawberry-blond hair, and her soft brown eyes. It wasn’t a terrible prospect, honestly.
People often said they looked more like sisters than mother and daughter—much to Julia’s pleasure and Vivian’s chagrin. But her mother’s outwardly pleasant f
ace belied a fierceness of character and a tendency toward perfectionism that was most often aimed squarely at Vivian—though others often found themselves in the crosshairs. Vivian watched as her mother pointed an accusing finger at the tray of hors d’oeuvres. The target of her mother’s displeasure at the moment appeared to be the housekeeper, Mrs. Graves.
“The Christmas Tree Ship,” Vivian said, turning back to the tree. Their father had loved to tell that story. He’d taken their mother down to the docks on the Chicago River the first year they were married to pick out their tree from the decks of the famous ship itself. That old-fashioned schooner had trolled the waters of Lake Michigan every fall to make its way to northern Wisconsin and fill itself to bursting with Christmas pines. According to the oft-told story, their mother had roamed the deck for a solid hour before picking a giant tree that proved almost impossible to get home to the small apartment they were renting at the time. But their father couldn’t refuse her. He said he could never refuse their mother anything.
Vivian blinked away the tears that sprang suddenly to her eyes. She missed her father, never more than at this time of year. She reached out and brushed her fingers against one of the glass icicles hanging on the tip of the branch closest to her. It swayed under her fingertips, sparkling in the lights. She realized too late that her touch had been too forceful. The icicle rocked dangerously, then slid from the branch and fell to the floor with a crash. She flinched, waiting for a sharp rebuke from her mother.
None came. Vivian slowly opened her eyes and unclenched her fists. She glanced over her shoulder, but her mother was no longer fussing with the canapés. She’d left the room before the crash. Vivian and Everett looked at each other in relief.
“Don’t worry about it, Viv. You know the saying: ‘You have to break a few ornaments to make a Christmas,’” Everett said.
She rolled her eyes at his lame attempt at a joke. “I believe that’s eggs and omelets.”
“I’ll get the broom,” he said.
“No, I’ll get it. It’s my mess.”
She strode across the room before Everett could dissuade her. Cleaning up would keep her mind off the party. But as she drew closer to the kitchen, she could hear her mother’s voice raised in irritation. Her mother was prickly at the best of times, but preparing for her parties always brought out the worst in her. And her mother’s worst was something Vivian didn’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole. Best to avoid the situation entirely, Vivian thought.
She doubled back to the front staircase and hopped up to the second floor. She’d just grab a broom from the second-floor utility closet, she thought. But she paused on the landing, her eyes falling on the closed door of her father’s study at the top of the stairs. Her heart clenched suddenly, and before she could think too deeply about what she was doing or why, she opened the study door and stepped inside, closing the door behind her with a soft click.
The study was dark and quiet. It smelled male, of tobacco and leather bindings. Vivian stood there for a moment, leaning against the door in the dark and intending just to pause long enough to gather her strength before the party began in earnest.
The only light in the room came from the distant streetlamp outside. It was faint, but her eyes followed it to what it illuminated: a picture frame sitting on the top of the bookcase. Her spirit lifted immediately at the sight of it, and she crossed the room to fetch the frame from the shelf. She smiled down on the contents: a tattered paper Saint Nicholas ornament she’d made as a child. Despite its homeliness, her father had loved it so much he’d had it framed and placed where he could see it all year round.
She touched her fingertips to the glass, remembering the day she had given him the ornament. The Christmas of 1918 when she was almost five, her father had nearly died from the Spanish flu, though she hadn’t known that at the time. She remembered handing her father the Saint Nicholas shyly, afraid of looking straight at him. She hadn’t seen him since he’d fallen ill two weeks earlier, and the wasted man lost in the bedclothes looked very little like the large, strapping father she’d always known. But then he’d smiled weakly at that ornament, at her—and Vivian’s heart broke a little recalling it even now, almost twenty years later.
She wanted this reminder of him, of what they’d shared as father and daughter, back on the Christmas tree where it belonged. She turned the frame over, removed the pins, and pulled off the backing. As she did, something flashed in the dim light and fell to the floor with a clatter. Vivian crouched and squinted into the darkness. She saw nothing with the first few sweeps of her eyes, but then there it was—just the tip sticking out from underneath the radiator. A tiny silver key.
Chapter Two
Vivian had kept all manner of secrets from her father, but she’d never suspected he’d kept any from her—until now. She stared at the tiny key in her palm and then glanced around the study. It had to open something in here, but what? She switched on the desk lamp to see better, moved to the filing cabinet, and pressed the tip of the key to the lock at the top. She expected it to slide in easily. When it didn’t, she wiggled it, turned it upside down, and tried again. No, it definitely didn’t fit. Her eyes scanned the room again and finally fell upon the large mahogany desk in front of her. Of course.
She sat in the desk chair and slipped the key into the drawer lock. She turned it, and with an audible click, it opened. Her palms grew sweaty, her stomach sour. It was ridiculous, she told herself. Her father had had nothing to hide. But if he’d had nothing to hide, why had he locked this drawer and hidden the key so well that no one was able to find it until now, so long after his death? She swallowed and pulled the drawer open before she lost her nerve.
It was empty. She tugged again on the pull, tipping the drawer down slightly.
No, not quite empty.
The large white envelope that had been wedged in the back appeared with a soft ripping noise. A tear had opened down the side, and the distinctive green of currency peeked through. Vivian leaned in closer to discern what was scrawled in pencil near the bottom right corner. A. W. Racquet. She glanced toward the doorway, the sounds of laughter and music becoming louder as guests arrived at the Christmas party downstairs. Her eyes swept the room, then caught on the framed photo of her mother on the desk. Vivian’s heart pounded as she pulled the envelope out and lifted the unsealed flap. Inside lay a thick wad of neatly stacked bills. She passed a thumb over them, listening to the muted whir of more cash than she’d ever held in her hands at one time before.
Then her thumb caught on the very last bit of paper. It was thicker than the bills and a cream color that, at first glance, blended in with the back of the envelope. Vivian slid it out halfway, and her eyes darted over the sentence scrawled on it in pencil: Talk and you lose everything.
Terror trailed icy fingers down her spine—a visceral memory of reading similar words directed at her only a few months ago. Her hands started to shake, the envelope rattling. But Vivian couldn’t tear her eyes away from those words. The note was not addressed, and it was unsigned. She flipped the paper over, but it was blank on the opposite side. The edges were torn, as if it had been written in haste and ripped from a larger piece of paper. She read the sentence twice, a third time, but it still made little sense. It was obviously a threat. But had her father been threatening someone else, or had someone been threatening him?
A floorboard squeaked in the hallway outside. Vivian shoved the cash and the note back into the envelope, dropping it back into the drawer before locking it. Her fingers slid down the dark-green velvet of her gown and over the smooth surface of her matching bolero jacket. Dash it all, no pockets. The doorknob rattled and began to turn. Vivian pulled the bodice of her dress away from her chest and deftly tucked the key under the edge of her brassiere. A split second later, the study door opened and Everett’s head poked into the room.
“There you are,” he said. His eyes flicked over the desk and the
disassembled picture frame upon it. “What are you doing in here?”
Vivian forced a smile, her heart hammering in her chest. She scanned Everett’s face, but she could read nothing among the freckles except mild curiosity. Her instinct had always been to keep everything close to the vest with him. He wasn’t a scabby-kneed kid anymore, but he had a long history of being indiscreet, as younger brothers often do. Her head was spinning, running through the many possible meanings of what she had found. She couldn’t have him announcing in the middle of the family Christmas party that she’d managed to open her father’s long-locked drawer and had found a stack of cash and an ominous note.
“I came to get this,” she said. She snatched the old paper ornament from the disassembled frame and held it up.
Everett’s brow wrinkled. “And what exactly is that?”
Vivian looked down at the treasured ornament. Old Saint Nick had seen better days—but not much better. She’d never been much of an artist, even at five years old. He was sun-faded and tattered, the red of his suit bleached a dusky pink, the tinsel on the end of his cap ragged and sparse. Still, her father had thought so much of the ornament that he’d had it framed shortly before his death. And then he hid the key to his desk drawer in the frame’s backing, she thought. Her stomach twisted.
“It’s Saint Nicholas, of course,” she said.
Everett raised his eyebrows.
“You made me think of it with all your reminiscing about Father and Christmas past,” Vivian went on, touching the scrap of remaining tinsel with her fingertip. “I thought I should free him from his frame and put him back on the tree where he belongs.”
Everett shrugged, frowning at her childish handiwork. “That thing hardly seems worth the trouble.”
Vivian grabbed a pencil from the cup that sat on the blotter and chucked it at him. He laughed as it glanced harmlessly off his shoulder.
“Anyway,” he said as he straightened up, his face mock serious. “I came to inform you, Miss Witchell, that guests have started to arrive and your absence downstairs has been noted by management.”
Homicide for the Holidays Page 1